Tweed loses another lawsuit

Sharemarket parasite David Tweed has lost another legal battle that will protect scores of potential victims living in NSW and Queensland.

The west Melbourne dealer has been beaten by a Brisbane man, Kelvin Brown, over a breach of contract action for $368.

The case has already cost Mr Tweed a substantial sum in legal fees and last week Supreme Court Justice Katherine Williams dismissed his appeal against a decision in the Melbourne Magistrates Court to stay the action on jurisdictional grounds.

The Magistrates Court had ruled that since Mr Brown and his witnesses lived in Queensland, it would be more appropriate to hear the case there.

Justice Williams rebuffed all the arguments of Mr Tweed's lawyers to have the stay overturned.

Mr Brown owns a small parcel of Axa Asia Pacific shares that Mr Tweed's company, National Exchange, sought to buy in 2002 for $1 below market value. When Mr Brown woke up to the trick and failed to post in his shareholder reference number, National Exchange sued him for loss of windfall profits.

Mr Tweed has taken hundreds of small shareholders to court, and another 21 cases are listed for hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court before the end of May.

Most are elderly and often chronically ill superannuants who acquired their shares when life insurers demutualised.

The respondents in several of these cases live outside Victoria, including six people who are jointly defended by the Melbourne law firm Slater & Gordon, as was Mr Brown. The six, who are IAG shareholders, are being sued for $14,480.

They have filed defences claiming that National Exchange's conduct is unconscionable, misleading, deceptive or unjust, and earlier this month Mr Tweed's lawyers failed to have the debtors' defence ruled out of court on the grounds that it did not disclose a proper defence.